


Breakaway

by Empatheia



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Abuse, Character Study, Gen, Murder, On the Run, Promiscuity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empatheia/pseuds/Empatheia
Summary: Some people live clear-cut lives where right and wrong are easy to differentiate. She's lived the other kind.





	Breakaway

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like we forget that ordinary people can fuck things up and get it wrong without being unambiguously, cartoonishly evil, sometimes. (Or: that last scene they gave her was a cop-out and I refuse to take it at surface value.)

Geraldine Grundy had not been named Most Likely to Become a Felon in her high school yearbook.

Granted, that was because that hadn't been her name at the time, and also her yearbook had not included that as a category, but even if it had she wouldn't have been in line for it. Her worst crime, in the eyes of her peers, was a tendency towards promiscuity, but even they knew that wasn't really a crime. She was just hungrier for love than most of them, had a faster metabolism when it came to that, and she never went for anyone who was already spoken for. As sluts went, she was far from the worst.

Beyond that, she was almost scrupulously clean. No truancy, no drugs, no shoplifting. She did her homework and put earnest effort into her extracurriculars. Her marks weren't at the top of the class, but they were close enough that her teachers were sure she'd go far.

Oh, she'd gone far, all right. Clear across the country with the hounds on her heels.

The girl Jennifer Gibson had been would have turned herself in, afterwards, horrified by what she had done. She would have dropped the kitchen knife on the floor and left it there and gone to the police with her husband's blood still on her hands, weeping about how she hadn't meant to do it.

She had, though. She  _ had _ meant to do it, and that was the moment Geraldine Grundy was born. A new name for a new life. The name of a woman who would not stand for one more day of abuse. The name of a woman who made things right and didn't feel any guilt.

Geraldine Grundy did not turn herself in. Geraldine Grundy packed her bags, took public transit to the suburbs, hitch-hiked to the next city over, and stole a car. Geraldine Grundy ran for her life.

Every once in a while she heard Jennifer Gibson in the back of her head, whispering  _ We could have pleaded self-defence. _ She reminded Jennifer Gibson that the law did not tend to look kindly on women who killed their husbands, and would be even less likely to look kindly on one like her. Promiscuous, wasn't she? And her husband had no history of violence. Everyone agreed that he was a good man. If he lost his temper, she must have deserved it. Surely a man like him would never strike his wife unjustly. No, she couldn't have been abused. And even if she had, had he deserved to die? That hadn't been her call to make, had it? No.

Even if they had been reluctant to execute her, she would never have been free. Any more than she had been free under his reign, or under her family's before him.

She had been a prisoner all her life, and she was done with it. A life on the run seemed like a fair trade for her freedom. She was not more afraid of the authorities than she had been of him. The worst they could do was kill her, after all, and he had been willing to do that too.

Geraldine dropped the stolen car in a ditch two states over just before it ran out of gas, after carefully cleaning it at a roadside gas station's quarter wash. She'd planned far enough ahead that what little money she had was all in cash, but she didn't feel safe in the stolen car, even if they didn't know who had stolen it just yet. From there, she hitchhiked erratically across the country, flirting her way into meals where she could, and into shelter when she had to. Sometimes she bought bus tickets to random destinations under a false name before hitching again. For months, she kept moving, changing her hair and adopting different styles of glasses every few weeks to stay anonymous.

In her heart of hearts, she hadn't really expected it to work, no matter how careful she was. She had grown up in a rigid world where the law always caught up with miscreants and they got what the law said they deserved. She slept lightly every night, waiting for the sound of sirens, a cold voice at the door calling the name she'd left behind.

Months passed, and nothing happened. She saw herself in the news every now and then, but the articles grew increasingly less fervent and optimistic. STILL AT LARGE, the bylines read. The police would not discuss an active investigation, of course, but things always got out anyway, and from all that did she gathered that they had very little. Her fingerprints were not on file, as she had been sick the day they had done that at school and nobody had really expected sweet quiet Jennifer to go astray down the road. She was the only suspect, of course, but they didn't even have any solid proof that she had done the deed. She had disposed of the murder weapon, and had a suitably vague but difficult to disprove alibi. Anyone who knew her would have happily slandered her character in the courtroom, wanton harlot that she was, but then reluctantly admitted that she wasn't the violent type.

She could have played innocent and gotten away with it, she thought. Maybe. Probably. But instead of staying caged up in Jennifer's life after breaking the lock so bloodily, all she had wanted to do was run face-first out into the barless, lockless world she had only seen from the gaol's windows.

So she had.

Months passed, and nothing happened, and she was running out of money no matter how sparing she was with it. So she chose a small town at random and charmed her way into a position at the school. That shouldn't have worked, either, but it was shockingly easy. No background check, when she teared up mentioning her late husband. No question that she was qualified, when she asked to borrow an instrument and demonstrated her skill. No suspicion, no competition, just blind smiling acceptance. They hadn't had a music teacher in two years. The last one had retired, and Riverdale's homogeneous little population hadn't been able to attract new skilled workers from any of the nearby cities in quite some time. No one said it, but she could tell that it was one of the many small towns slowly dying as its youth found their way to the urban centres as if drawn by magnets.

So easy. Almost too easy, but she hadn't let her guard down just yet.

No, that came almost a year later, when she drove past Archie Andrews on his way home and her hunger finally overcame her cautious restraint. She'd been starving herself since she got there, ever so careful not to endanger her welcome, and then she'd ruined it all in the space of a moment, when she met his eyes and saw what was behind them.

A caged thing, hungry for a freedom she knew how to give it.

Irresistible.

For months, then, she walked the line with all the caution her ugly life had taught her thus far.

It still wasn't enough. The murder and Archie's stubborn conscience were what finally tipped the boat, but it had been rocking dangerously long before that, as she began to realize that she'd made more than one mistake here.

To seduce someone she shouldn't was one thing; it could be apologized for, and smoothed over, because sex alone wasn't really the problem. She could be forgiven for having bad momentary judgment, for failing to restrain an impulse, as long as she accepted her punishment without protest.

She was much less likely to be forgiven for having actual feelings about the victim of her... indiscretion.

To her horror, though, she knew she did. Watching his callused fingers on the strings, listening to his sad young voice keening its way through the melodies of his soul, meeting those eyes that showed off the whole of his soul for anyone to see. Innocent, in many ways, but fiercely determined to make his own choices, and just as determined to shoulder the consequences thereof. A boy on the bleeding edge of manhood.

She gave him what she could of a way forward into a life of his own making. Skill, encouragement, something to write songs about.

Then, at the end, an example to follow. What it looked like when one's mistakes came home to roost, and one potential way of answering those consequences.

Once again, Geraldine Grundy packed up and left her life, but this time it wasn't to escape punishment. No, this time having to leave _was_ the punishment, and she was simply accepting it as right and just. She'd liked her life in Riverdale. If she could have done something else to make reparations and stayed, she would have. The option had not been offered.

The pain was... immense.

Too big to cope with all at once. There was stuff that needed to be done, anyway; packing up, settling her accounts, saying goodbye to those who wanted to hear it from her. She pushed the pain down and locked it away for the time being. 

That had the unintended consequence of leaving her a hollow shell once again, aching to fill herself with... something, anything. The same hunger that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. 

She'd already lost everything, though, so what could it hurt now to be precipitous?

At the gas station, she bought a pair of heart-shaped glasses from the glowering clerk, and donned them like a ritual. Before she packed the last of her clothes, she put on an outfit she hadn't worn since the first flight; less staid schoolteacher, more Jennifer Gibson, but not really either of them. Something new. Some _ one _ new. She would get a haircut the next town over, and maybe dye it, and buy some new clothes. She knew how to do this, how to  _ be _ this. She'd survive.

A pair of strapping young men strolled past just as she opened the door to her little car, which would have to be faithful a while longer yet. Their skin was burnished with summer light, the unrestrained striving of youth in every line of their still-growing bodies. 

She pulled the glasses down a moment to let them see her eyes; old habits, easily resumed. If she had met their eyes a moment longer, they would have stopped, and she could have devoured whatever they gave her to ease the gnawing ache within.

Instead, she got into her car, turned the ignition, and left Riverdale in her rearview mirror.

She stopped for the night five towns over, dyed her hair red in the motel mirror and hacked it off at her chin. The next morning, she visited a few thrift stores, and came away with an idea of who she was going to be next.

Seven hours later, thirty miles outside of anywhere, she veered off the road into a field of new wheat and turned the car off. Then she pulled her knees up to her chest, braced them against the steering wheel, and sobbed into them until her throat was raw and her eyes burned and there was nothing left inside her but a numb crevasse.

It was hours till dusk, but she didn't feel like going anywhere. She ate a gas station sandwich and drank some Gatorade and stared out over the fields and forests, watching the shadows shift as the sun sank, thinking about nothing at all.

When it got dark, she curled up across the front seats and slept like driftwood for twelve hours. Her dreams were quiet, empty as the rest of her, and that was good.

She woke up to clean sunlight. Her insides felt cleaner, too, and a tension that had hounded her for months was gone, despite the crick in her neck.

Time to start over one more time, she thought, turning the car on and returning to the road. The thought made her ache, but not unbearable. She would just have to do better next time around. Make fewer mistakes. Be... better.

She was going to need a new name.

**X**


End file.
